Ant Species Cooperates With Pitcher Plant For Mutualistic Feeding

New light has been shed on the strange mutualistic relationship that exists between a species of Bornean insect-eating pitcher plant and a species of ant that is found living only on them, thanks to new research from University of Cambridge and the University Brunei Darussalam.

Image Credit: Scharmann M, Thornham DG, Grafe TU, Federle W

The ant species — Camponotus schmitzi — preys on the mosquito larvae that are sometimes born in the pitcher plants, thus stopping said them from stealing the plants nutrition.

“The unusual relationship between insect-eating pitcher plants and ants that live exclusively on them has long puzzled scientists. The ants live only on one species of Bornean pitcher plants (Nepenthes bicalcarata), where they walk across slippery pitcher traps, swim and dive in the plant’s digestive fluids and consume nectar and prey that fall into the trap. Though the benefits to the ants are obvious, it has been harder to tell what exactly the plants gain. However, plants that harbor the insects grow larger than those that do not, suggesting a mutualistic relationship exists between the two.”

In the new research, the flow of nutrients from ants to their plant hosts was finally uncovered. It was found that “plants colonized by insects received more nitrogen than those that did not host ants. Ants appeared to increase the pitchers’ capture efficiency by keeping traps clean, and also protected the plants by actively hunting mosquito larvae that otherwise bred in pitcher fluids and sucked up plant nutrients.”

“Kneeling down in the swamp amidst huge pitcher plants in a Bornean rainforest, it was a truly jaw-dropping experience when we first noticed how very aggressive and skilled the Camponotus schmitzi ants were in underwater hunting: it was a mosquito massacre!” says Scharmann. “Later, when we discovered that the ants’ droppings are returned to the plant, it became clear that this unique behaviour could actually play an important role in the complex relationship of the pitcher plant with the ants.”

The researchers speculate that the “nutrients the pitchers would have otherwise lost to flies are instead returned to them as ant colony wastes. They conclude that the interaction between ants, pitcher plants and mosquito larvae in the pitcher represents a new type of mutualism, where animals can help mitigate the damage caused by nutrient thieves to a plant.”

So, essentially, what the ants do is keep the nutrition recycling within the environment of the mutualistic pitcher plant, rather than allowing the nutrition to be carried off with the mosquitos and deposited elsewhere… Say perhaps, in the Gulf of Mexico… Where, in our current industrial agriculture system, much of the fertilizers that we apply in the Great Plains region end up.

The research was recently published in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

About the Author

James Ayre 's background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy. You can follow his work on Google+.

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